“Reporters are looking for two main things. First, you need to be able to describe why you are there and what you are doing in a short, succinct and fully formed sentence or two – leaving out any jargon.

Second, you need to explain why people – the viewers – should care.

Prior to the interview:

Have four or five “Press Kits” ready. You will keep one and give one to each network representative who shows up. Purchase two-sided pocket folders. On the right side, there should be slits so a business card can be inserted. Insert your card, or a card with the contact information for your organization, into the slits. Insert a copy of your press release in the left pocket. This is the only document that goes in the left pocket.

In the right pocket, insert Fact Sheets printed on 20-pound paperweight, bright, white paper. The Fact Sheets can come directly off of your organization’s website, or that of a like-minded organization. These are never copyrighted and available for use by anyone. Behind the Fact Sheets, insert two-three sheets of paper containing relevant research on the subject. This may include studies or polls released by reputable non-biased agencies, preferably with websites with a URL ending in .edu or .gov. Finally, if there is any relevant legislative issues or bills being introduced that will affect your issue, print out and provide those as well. Reporters will be much more open to airing or printing stories they don’t have to research entirely on their own. You’ve done that for them.

How to Prepare for an Interview

When the media shows up to your event or invites you to the studio for an interview, follow these tips so you can be prepared. Anticipate common questions, such as:

· What group do you represent? Know the exact legal name, including the Inc. and if applicable, add that it is a 501 c(3) non-profit organization.

· What is your position within the group? If you are a volunteer, say so. If you are an employee or board member, state that as well.

· What are you there for today? Be sure to know specifics and give full names.

· Why is it important for the public to be aware of this issue? State how it affects them directly.

· What is a better solution? Always have an answer to a problem. Never present a problem without presenting one or more solutions to consider.

· What can the viewers at home do about this? Give precise answers.

· What do you say to people who say (insert opponent’s argument?) Know all of your opponent’s arguments and how to counter them.

Make sure you can answer these common questions with just one or two sentences. Unless your interview is being broadcast live, it will probably be edited down to one or two sound bites, or 20 seconds of talk, so make them count. You can practice your interviewing skills by having someone ask you questions about the issue or your group.

What to Do During an Interview

Start by thanking the reporter for covering the issue. Don’t be profuse. Just a “thanks for coming” is better than over-enthusiasm for the media presence. Don’t waste a minute of yours or their time.

If you are being interviewed by a television crew, remember to look at the interviewer and not the camera.

Do not be emotional. Be matter-of-fact. Don’t come off as over-sensitive or hysterical. If you feel you cannot stay calm and businesslike, ask someone else to take the interview.

What if you are asked a question for which you have no answer?

· If the interview is being broadcast live, say that you don’t know the answer, and then redirect the conversation toward a topic that you do know.

· If the interview is not being broadcast live, offer to get back to the reporter later with an answer. Reporters work on very tight deadlines, so get the information and follow up as soon as possible, preferably within a couple of hours. At the end of the interview, thank the interviewer again. If you feel the interviewer has not asked the right questions and the interview appears to be ending soon, be proactive and speak up!

Quickly add, “I’d just like to conclude by saying . . .”

The most important take-away is to be on point, conversational, and passionate. Hit your key points on camera succinctly. You can explain all of the background off camera.

During my entire tenure with bullseye, I’ve heard nothing but how far the sport has declined. From a practical viewpoint, I really haven’t been around that long. And I don’t have firsthand personal experience about how things were back-in-the-day. Apparently, fifteen, twenty or more years ago there must have a lot more bullseye shooters.

I still hear stories about how the census of pistol shooters at the Nationals numbered around one thousand in the early 1980s. Today it’s generally about 650.

Time changes everything. In prior posts even I’ve lamented about how the shooting pie has been carved up by cowboy action shooters, practical guys, clay smashers and the benchrest dudes. I wouldn’t be at all surprised that even WWII and Civil War reenactors have had a slight drain on our census. From the 1930s through the 70s bullseye might have been pretty much the only game in town, but that’s not the case today.

Social transformation is like death and taxes, something everyone can count on. A lot of emotional effort has spilled over the turbulent ‘decline’ of Bullseye, and it’s been marked with the same breathless, excitable, often crude and always knowing style that typifies the old hardcore elite: by doing things the same old way.

My own experience getting into the sport wasn’t exactly easy. My kids went off to college and I searched for an interesting and challenging hobby. I now had some leisure time. It took me the better part of a year to find out that competitive pistol shooting was only four miles away from my front door. And I doubt with the passing of about a decade, access or visibility hasn’t gotten any better. Today, the general promotion of our sport to the public and potential new shooters is simply by word of mouth.

Many of us mourn the slow erosion of our sport, and ponder: is it too late to revitalize it?
I don’t think so.

There are a few success stories around. One bright spot is occurring now in New Jersey. It’s a quantifiable success story, playing out in a state that’s considered very anti-gun. Within the confines of the Garden Sate, individuals such as Ray and Mary Badiak, John Gemmill and Frank Greco are consistently blazing a trail by developing new bullseye shooters—both young and mature.
They’ve been successful in a state which has the most draconian gun laws in the country. It’s a process that reproducible, but no one seems to notice their success.

If you can do it in Jersey, you can do it anywhere.

After a little head scratching I looked at some of the other disciplines and noticed how they do things. One observation that’s fairly obvious, they compete, compete for new members and promote themselves to the general public.

So, what are the glaring things we don’t do?

It appears most state associations don’t know how to run a modern marketing organization—and whether they know it or not—that’s what they’re in business to do. They should be promoting (which means marketing and advertising) the shooting sports. After that’s established, as a secondary issue, handle their respective lobbing tasks.

How many news releases do they routinely offer to the local media outlets? Your guess is as good as mine.

Those same state organizations should attempt to forge regional coalitions for the promotion of various disciplines, since many of us routinely cross state lines to compete.

A national or regionalized websites should be crafted and have match announcements, results and signup functionality. As well, background information for consumption by the general public should be amply provided. Points of contact should be visibly listed so budding bullseye shooters can get started. And it should have good and consistently updated content.

Let’s consider the following:

• Who hasn’t been to an NRA banquet? Well, what’s being done to raise money for the orderly operation of our sport? The truth is the NRA no longer sees us as a priority. It would be nice to see not just bullseye but various other competitive shooting disciplines on the American Rifleman television show much more frequently. [That’s code for picking up the phone and calling Larry Potterfield and others like him.] Yes, money drives television programming. But keep in mind, individuals paying for programming have every right to maximize their investment by targeting their audience. Maybe they should be made aware we are their consumers too.

• Have there been any real efforts in recruiting bullseye shooters over the past 10 years? IPSC, CAS, USPSA, IDPA … they do. I can’t recall the last time any of us have seen the following: A dedicated NRA webpage for Bullseye Pistol; national leadership for the promotion of our sport; junior development; and a mechanism to recruit women.

• Even though there’s a historical claim, the simple truth is there’s no functioning leadership for our sport. We’ve relied on the NRA to do all of this in a vacuum. And as a matter of course, they’ve simply done things the same old way for the past half century. And in the process, they’ve lost their way.
I’m not suggesting they not be responsible for this mission. But we, as competitors, have lacked the will to actually lobby them. I highly doubt that the Competitions Division rarely hears from shooters except when they want something for themselves. And the same may be true of the state associations when they approach the NRA.

Walt Walters, an NRA board member, over the past two years has attempted to rework this model. He can recall a time, in the not so distant past, when the NRA had state and regional competitive shooting ambassadors. These individuals were readily available to provide guidance and insight to local clubs, state associations and government. Walt’s goal is to rebuild that old army of supporters so they can be of assistance throughout the country.

Even though Walt is a board member, he’s facing a tough uphill road with accomplishing his goals. Unfortunately, I think he’s looking at the past to address his present concerns about competitive shooting’s current neglect.

Here’s my basic observation. For a group of people who traditionally think of themselves as competitors, that’s precisely what we don’t do in the open marketplace of ideas. We all want to shoot (and I’m guilty of this too) but few of us want to roll up our sleeves. Over the past three decades we’ve allowed an enormous number of people to gravitate to other disciplines.

The other shooting sports embraced potential shooters, or we allowed them to leave our discipline even before they had an opportunity to arrive. They were marketed to, invited, sold—and best of all—greeted with open arms. For the most part the majority of those newbies didn’t even know we existed.
The future can be ours. All we have to do is be involved.

Like this:

I’m overwhelmed by all my gun-owning friends posting statistics, facts, and memes to convince the gun grabbers that they are wrong.

Here’s something to consider. Emotional arguments are rarely successfully countered by facts and statistics. The facts are very clear in this case. Do you think that re-stating them endlessly on Facebook is likely to change someone’s mind? I don’t.

Can you think of a single occasion where you have had a major change of opinion after reading a Facebook post or meme? I can’t.

You aren’t going to change a stranger’s worldview by posting more on the internet. Instead, focus your efforts on making positive changes through personal contact with the people who are close to you and who already respect you as a person. Don’t waste your time arguing with strangers on social media.

Instead of posting on Facebook, I taught 27 students how to be safer shooters, more formidable fighters, and better tacticians this weekend. Each of those students will undoubtedly use some of the skills I shared to make their own tribes more robust and resilient.

In the long term, those small, personal changes are the fuel for positive societal evolution. CNN soundbites and Facebook memes are merely annoying background noise.

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Forbes contributor Elizabeth MacBride spent six months specializing in the firearms industry, investigating and then summing up what she learned.

Takeaway: The most important influencing factor towards positive coverage of shooters, gun owners, and firearms is a consistent, open dialogue that showcases safe and skillful use, humanizes firearm users, and is inviting to everyone. Much more than political rhetoric, turning positive usage into a story and then consistently telling people about it is the best path forward.

Often, the problem is that negligent and criminal misuse is more sensational and easier to report. This is not the media’s fault as it falls inline with human nature. Skilled firearm users are rare compared to casual gun owners and not vocal enough to maintain a consistent voice.

I started covering the business of guns in part because the decline of high-quality print journalism in the past two decades means nuance is being lost. I believe nuance is crucial to sustain a pluralistic society, here and abroad. That’s part of the reason I covered the Middle East for three years; we all suffer from many Americans’ inability to see that region without prejudice.

And business, which tends to be a reasonably neutral and thankfully numbers-based lens through which to write, is a good platform for exploring topics on which there are many points of view.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned in my first six months.

1. Most of the gun community is open to fair-minded coverage.

2. The world of gun businesses is far more nuanced than I imagined, and in different ways that I imagined.

3. Marketing, politics and business are almost inseparable.

4. There are no good numbers.

5. It’s a business with a declining customer base.

6. Many more people like guns than I realized.

7. The West is different. Gun owners and gun businesses out West see guns as tools, one element of a practical, inherently nuanced way of existing in the world.

8. Violence marketing is more powerful than we realize.

9. There is no such thing as a gun. The technology has evolved faster than the language, so much so that we have reverted to broader words

Competitive musketry dates to 16th century England and has been an Olympic sport since 1896. Today trap, a cousin of skeet and sporting clays, is as popular with Minnesota’s urban boys and girls as it is with their counterparts in rural areas, where hunting’s in the DNA. “It’s just cool, because I get to use a gun,” said Stephanie Petsilis, 17, who shoots for Wayzata High School outside Minneapolis with a $1,430 Browning BT-99 Micro.

No Backlash
To wary educators, Sable stressed his motto — “Safety, fun and marksmanship, in that order” — and strict rules: no firearms allowed on campus. Team members must have state-issued safety certificates, which in Minnesota can be earned at age 11. The league record is clean, with no reported injuries.

A nonprofit supported by fees, donations and sponsorships, the league marketed itself aggressively and developed proprietary score-tracking software. The sport took off.

Like this:

Some guy who fondles an inflatable spheroid with his feet gets 23.2 times more love from Facebook than all the fans of the National Rifle Association combined.

Tom McHale had a great write up on Facebook’s policy to delete pages and posts about gun trades and sales from non-FFL holders. He also included a good breakdown of the demographics of shooting and pro-gun involvement compared to more mainstream interests, such as sport ball athletes and movie celebrities.

Facebook doesn’t care about you or your issues. Facebook cares about three things:

How many people use Facebook.

How many hours those people spend on Facebook.

How many dollars marketers will pay Facebook for access to those people.

The same can be said for all media outlets. Replace the name of a broadcast or print media outlet or news program in place of “Facebook” and this is still true. It’s also true for pro-gun publications and websites, even though they are focused on a specific niche and demographic instead of the public at large. After Kim Rhode medalled in six Olympics in a row, some claimed her lack of media coverage was due to media bias. However, USA Today, the New York Times, CBS Sports, SB Nation, NBC, WGN, and the Chicago Tribune published articles about her. Other publications such as Time, Forbes, the Huffington Post, and NPR published articles about Rhode’s accomplishments that highlighted her views on the Second Amendment.

This isn’t some nefarious anti-gun plot, it is simply catering to the majority. Gun owners are largely ignorant of organized shooting activity. Non-gun owners are even less aware and interested. This is the simple result of a market in action, not back-room politics trying to steal your guns. If the issue is controversial but of interest to a small minority, it’s probably easier to just avoid dealings and prevent alienating the majority, and especially alienating people and companies buying advertising/marketing trying to reach that general public.

Common, accepted estimates place somewhere between 50-80 million Americans as owning at least one firearm. I don’t know why there is such a vast lack of interest in organized shooting events among them but given that there is, shooting will never be a mainstream activity. It’s not politics. It’s not anti-gun policy. It’s the result of the market voting with their dollars and feet.

After whining about a media blackout, complaining about a raw deal and then being shown that this was just poor perception and that the local media would work with his shooting range, all interest was lost.

Notice I asked very specific, answerable questions about club size, participation and the like. Not a single answer. This haphazard, complete lack of organization is a major problem. No idea how many members and what sort of interest is being generated. No press releases or links to a web site were offered, or details of any form of organized events, likely because there were none. Any wonder why media people didn’t care? If there is no story to cover and nothing interesting of note, why are we surprised when no story appears?

I did the research. I handed this guy a specific name, title, email and phone number of an editor willing to publish his press releases at the very publication claimed to have a “media blackout” against gun owners. After that, he went silent. I guess he just wanted his blackout to be there, hidden behind an evil cabal. When instead he had the name and contact info of a real person willing to talk, interest ceased. The fact that the club had some controversy made a story even more potentially appealing. But, no. Do nothing, then blame the media for your problems.